As I listened to the Rognmoe’s story in From The Deep, I began to wonder: how does one go on living when everything is falling apart? How did they fight for their daughters best treatment when the doctors said she’d never recover? And then I wandered deeper in my thoughts… how do soldiers keep going when their legs are riddled with shrapnel? How do people live for weeks in the wilderness, lost and alone?

How do we go on when it hurts?

I don’t think it matters what the struggle is; one tragedy is not worse than another, one struggle not easier than another. Whether its a near-drowning or a really bad divorce, a brush with death on the labor and delivery table or a still-born baby—these are all places where our reality brushes up against faith. Each deep crevice of harsh experience is a place where we face a choice, a choice to give up or go on.

There once lived a man who had everything. And I do mean everything. He had a large and healthy family, a beautiful wife and 7 strong sons. He was wealthy and had a very profitable business prominent in his community. He was well respected and well liked.

And then suddenly, he didn’t.

His business was stolen out from under his nose. His house burned down killing all of his children (luckily his wife was spared), and in the process of loosing it all rumors started and thwarted his reputation. If there ever was a worst day ever, this guy had it.

As he sat in the ashes of his life, his friends (the few he had left) questioned him. (More like interrogated and lectured- but that’s another conversation for another time). As he answered their questions a theme arose, one that undoes me in the face of tragedy.

Job waited on hope.

Several times throughout his story he spells out hope in God no matter the circumstances he faced. Yet, at the same time he declared the goodness of God, he also acknowledged his pain. He didn’t deny the circumstances, or numb himself to them. Instead, he acknowledged them and chose to go on. Job chose life through hope, not circumstances.

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job 1:21

Sitting there in the hospital room with their daughter, Beth Ayn faced the same choice. Do I give up and stop fighting? Do I let the weight of this struggle do me in? Or do I press on, choosing life?

That choice could not be made based on the doctor’s prognosis, nor could it be founded on their daughter’s reactions to treatment. It had to come from somewhere unseen, somewhere outside themselves. It should be noted, that even if the Rognmoes chos to give in and give up, Hannah would have lived. But because they chose hope she not only is breathing with a heart beat- she is thriving beyond what everyone thought possible. Miracles abound in their story because they have waited with hope.

The wounded soldier made it out alive because he hoped in something beyond his injuries. The lost hiker made it back home because he hoped in something beyond the overwhelming forest.

And you and I? We’re gonna make it. We can chose life even when every circumstance around us shouts dead and done. Place hope outside the paycheck and stack of bills. Place hope beyond the words of the argument. Place hope apart from the expressions and reactions of your friends.

We live not by circumstance but by hope.

The book From the Deep: Hope’s Triumph over Tragedy will be available for purchase on September 10, 2017! Click here for more details: www.fromthedeepthebook.com

“And then I did what I do when I have nowhere to go and nothing else I can do: I prayed.”

How many times has tragedy struck like lightening and you immediately hit your knees? Like when my Dad was rushed to the emergency room in the middle of the night, we prayed. Or the time the car got stuck on the hill far from civilization during the worst fall blizzard in decades, I prayed with strangers. Even as they were rushing me into emergency surgery, blood gushing everywhere, I cried out the name of Jesus. Tragedy struck and I prayed.

I do that when I have know where to go and nothing else to do. I pray. And I bet you do to.

But what are we praying for?

Help? Deliverance from the trial? Breakthrough in the struggle? An answer? What if the response from heaven isn’t what we were praying for, what then?

Tragedy is something that sneaks up and knocks the wind out of your lungs. It’s ruthless in choosing its target, no one is exempt. We all have experienced some sort of tragic event; some sort of deep moment where ordinary was severed and became extraordinary. There in those moments we experience loss, rejection, pain. Doubts surface, fears rage, ache runs deep. And so we pray, as we should.

But when we pray the right prayers and quote all the right scriptures. When we hold hands and lift our eyes and bend our knees and bow our heads and the heavens stay silent. What does that mean?

When the paramedics were called to come save my dad I remember sitting in the living room next to the silent Christmas tree with my mom and little brother. We prayed. We prayed loud and hard. And at first, it was a shaky scared sort of prayer. But something came into the room, like a breeze. Something that didn’t have words.

A few minutes later they loaded up my father on a stretcher and wheeled him out the front door, into the ambulance. I stood there wrapped in my pink fluffy robe, too young to understand what risks were filling that ambulance cab. I didn’t know how close to death he was, I had no clue the medical terms they were using.

But I knew he’d be okay. I knew because I felt Him.

“Okay” can mean a lot of things, and in the wake of tragedy we don’t get to define them. But standing in the swirl of “what if’s” and “how can this be”, there’s a center pointe. Hope. In the middle of the raging circumstances and uncertainties, what we are really searching for is assurance. Sure, we pray for healing and rescue. But sometimes that healing and rescue looks like peace in the cancer ward or a hand to hold at a grave site.

Hope isn’t wrapped in outcomes. Hope is given in presence.

So when we are struck by tragedy, what we are really praying for is Emmanuel— God with us. And that prayer is always answered. Always.

*This post is part of a series about my new book coming out September 10th! Read all about it by clicking the picture below.